Barbara Grossato’s works manifest in the aesthetic organicity of the forms a primordial strength of a female matrix, a characterising feature of her expressive style. The weave of brushstrokes creates ‘forests of signs’, in which the colours are sanguine despite the use of cold pastel shades. Progressively, the background-line distinction gives way to the imposition of a fast and accurate brushstroke, which entirely covers the surface with phytomorphic traces, material in the regular but always different curling of the profiles. The transition from painting – a technique never entirely abandoned – to sculpture and installation takes place under the banner of a process that elects manual weaving as a fundamental component of the work. An example of this creative process is the work “Space and light”, the obsessive weaving of industrial materials, aluminium hangers, takes place following geometric modules predisposed to exponential growth, which gain strength from the assembly by accumulation and repetition of the basic cell. In “Nature”, on the other hand, the vitalistic pole emerges more, aerial embroidery formed by ropes to which the artist gives movement, imparting energy by covering them with a very fine white paper die. The patient work purifies the support from its material nature and abstracts it from its original function. Patient work purifies the support from its material nature and abstracts it from its original function. The artist’s strong scenic sense also enhances its chromatic potential in the contrast of light and dark, creating a harmonious and only apparently random sprawling and labyrinthine arrangement of real traces in space. Similar considerations also apply to ‘Power in action’. but with outcomes of an opposite sign to the previous installation. Thin sanitary cannulae, filled with carmine liquid, draw paths on the ground that insinuate themselves into the nooks and crannies of rooms and courtyards, to rediscover their spatial potential and imbue them with unusual and disturbing values.
Chiara Costa
Barbara Grossato 